Two more equestrian events were added during this period—the two-horse chariot-race for colts, and the riding-race for colts, introduced in Ols. 129 and 131 respectively. Both these events, introduced obviously with the intention of encouraging horse breeding, had been introduced half a century earlier at Delphi, doubtless owing to Macedonian influence. Lastly in Ol. 145 the athletic programme was completed by the introduction of the pankration for boys, which was won by Phaedimus, described variously as from Alexandria Troas, or from Naukratis in Egypt. The pankration was not a competition suited for boys, and it was a true athletic feeling which had so long excluded it from the boys’ events at Olympia. Its introduction is significant of the growing love of sensational and brutal displays which we associate rather with the Romans than the Greeks. It was only a few years later that Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) introduced into Syria the Roman gladiatorial games, and though the innovation at first met with criticism and opposition, the Greeks only too soon became accustomed to such sights.
With the advent of the Romans the history of Greek athletics really ends, though the athletic festivals were destined to survive four centuries or more under their patronage. The Romans posed as the champions and kinsmen of the Greeks, and like the Macedonians fully realised the importance of these festivals. As early as 228 B.C. they had been admitted to participation in the Eleusinian mysteries and the Isthmian games, in recognition of their services in freeing the Adriatic from Illyrian pirates, though it may be doubtful if Roman citizens deigned to compete in the actual sports. Again in 196 B.C. it was at the Isthmian games that Flamininus proclaimed the liberation of Greece from the tyranny of Macedon. At Olympia Titus Manlius had appeared as ambassador in 208 B.C. to secure the support of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks against their common foe Carthage. Finally Mummius commemorated the defeat of the Achaeans, the destruction of Corinth, and the restoration of unity to Greece by dedicating at Olympia a bronze statue of Zeus and twenty-one golden shields arrayed above the colonnade surrounding the temple of Zeus. But the unity thus commemorated was secured at the cost of liberty.